There’s a fascinating article at Atlantic on a subject about which I knew nothing. As it turns out in the 16th century 90% of the Mexican population died, killed by a disease they still haven’t been able to pinpoint:
The Spanish, infamously, brought a litany of diseases unknown to the indigenous population—smallpox, measles, typhus—so some experts have suggested cocoliztli is simply one of those. Others, like Acuña-Soto, have argued it is an unknown viral hemorrhagic fever native to Mexico. The cause of cocoliztli has never been conclusively identified.
But an intriguing new theory is being discussed—the possibility that the disease was caused by a variety of Salmonella, the variety that causes paratyphoid fever:
Now, DNA from 16th-century cocolitzli victims has offered up a somewhat unexpected new candidate: Salmonella enterica, or the bacteria that cause paratyphoid fever. The DNA evidence comes from the teeth of 11 people buried in a large Mixtec cemetery in southern Mexico. Prior archaeological work had linked the burials to the 1545 cocolitzli epidemic, and the city was likely abandoned after the disease killed so many of its inhabitants.
It seems to me that one way of testing the hypothesis would be to determine if Mexico’s present population has resistance to the disease. They are descended from the survivors, after all.
Just don’t think of the typhoid fevers as being that deadly. Guess it could be a variant, or was worse since it was associated with droughts.
Steve
Just to clarify what I think they are studying. From 1518 to 1545, there are accounts of at least three waves of what the Spanish called the plague (believed to be smallpox) that have been estimated to have reduced the population in Central Mexico from 25.2 million to 6.3 million.
Between 1545 to 1623, there were repeated waves of plague, influenza, measles and something called “cocoliztli” which was unknown to the Spanish, who also contracted it. This research posits it is salmonella, whereas the previous best guess was rat-born hantavirus originating in the disruption of Indian sanitation measures. In this later period, the population drops from 6.3 million to 700,000.
I used the population estimates republished in the book 1491, which focuses on small pox across both continents but there are other estimates that emphasize cocoliztli as a larger contribution. Seem like these are all educated guesses.